PALM DESERT, CALIF. — The 21st-century renaissance of agriculture is underway, said A.G. Kawamura, former secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, as he opened a panel discussion on seed cultivation, fruit breeding and genetics during the May 30 Sustainable Produce Summit.
“It truly is a cascade of knowledge and new technologies and a new way of looking at how we might solve some of the greatest challenges and solutions of our lifetime,” said Kawamura, who moderated the session.
Kawamura was joined by Sun World Chief Science Officer Jennifer Peterson and Cristiane Lourenco, global sustainability director for Bayer Vegetable Seeds.
Peterson shared how Sun World breeds new varieties for climate-smart farming, adding that breeding starts with the grower.
“The fewer inputs that you have to deliver exceptional quality and good yields in a way that people can maintain their businesses and be successful, [the better],” she said. “We’ve got to have varieties out there that people can be successful with for our growers, but also, of course, for everybody in the value chain and, of course, eventually the consumer.”
Peterson said climate-smart farming is a blanket term for the innovations and R&D needed to anticipate where farming is headed in the next 10 to 20 years.
“It takes 10-plus years to develop a variety,” she said. “So, our climate-smart breeding initiative is really around trying to understand the changes of climate and what that will look like in the 5-, 10-, 15- or 20-year time frames.”
Sun World also focuses on efficient water use and disease resistance, Peterson said, but it has to keep the consumer in mind and select varieties based on what the consumer wants.
“We’ve got to not overemphasize the grower traits and then not pay attention to the consumer,” she said.
Lourenco said Bayer also looks to productivity, disease resistance, water use and taste when breeding for the varieties of the future, adding that the company focuses on creating varieties with more efficient input and water use and climate resilience.
As Bayer develops those varieties, it uses data to predict and model what growing regions will look like 10 years in the future, Lourenco said.
“We are developing modeling tools and using data science to create the environment that these microregions will have in the next 10 to 20 years,” she said. “We can start to breed the plants already looking for that environment and then also simulate the new climates or the new water conditions that we have there.”
Peterson said perennial crop breeders also need to look at the longevity of the crops, and as much as possible, “develop varieties that are going to be durable and persist and be able to be successful over a long-time horizon.”
Kawamura asked the panelists to discuss how technology, such as gene editing, can help breeding programs.
“It’s a numbers game, so we’ve got to de-risk that that whole process,” Peterson said. “[Breeding technologies are] so powerful and enable us to go faster but weed the chaff. Get rid of all the stuff that you don’t really want to spend any time having a breeder to evaluate.”
Gene-marker technology, she said, helps breeders look for things like seedlessness and disease resistance in table grape seedlings in Sun World’s R&D greenhouses.
“The whole thing here is to shorten the product development timeline and get a better product faster,” she said.
Using DNA sequence data and genomes that control flavor, productivity and water use can help breeders select the best varieties to develop.
Resilience is a major focus for the future of breeding, according to Lourenco, who said Bayer uses technology to help look for seeds that help minimize carbon-dioxide emissions, use less water, increase yields and minimize inputs.
During a Q&A, an attendee asked about GMOs and how the panelists communicate the use of gene editing and GMOs to consumers.
Peterson said it’s important the produce industry understands the perspective of the consumer.
“There’s not a one-size-fits-all answer on this,” she said. “Sometimes it’s a fear of the technology or a ... food safety issue. Once we understand that, we can target the messaging.”
Peterson said using this technology is not that far from what breeders have done for hundreds of years.
“They’re all genes in our genomes in a population or in a species,” she said. “We’re just trying to do a little bit of tailoring to make the process a little faster, a little bit more precise. And we could probably get there the old-fashioned way of having lots of plants in the ground. You don’t have time for that. We don’t have money for that.”
Another panelist asked about the use of artificial intelligence in breeding. Peterson shared how Sun World works with Climate AI to help understand how its varieties perform in growing regions around the world.
Climate AI also applies climate change models to predict how growing regions will change and shift over time. Pairing that data with specific genetic markers could play an important role in variety selection in the future, Peterson said.
